Madison Administrations - Foreign Issues
Foreign Issues
The United States engaged in active commercial relations with Europe in the early years of the nineteenth century. Foreign trade was profitable, but troublesome. By flying a neutral flag and trading with both of the main belligerents in the Napoleonic Wars (1803–15)—France and Great Britain—the U.S. merchant marine was making money. But in June 1807 a British frigate, the Leopard, fired on a U.S. warship, the Chesapeake, inside U.S. territorial waters. The British boarded the U.S. ship, removed four deserters from the British navy, and hung one of them. Madison's predecessor, Thomas Jefferson, responded to the challenge in an unexpected way—one that was guaranteed to hurt the U.S. economy much more than the British. He simply imposed a total embargo on goods leaving U.S. ports.
This self-imposed blockade was a remarkable policy decision. For one thing, it certainly demonstrated how anxious...
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